A look back at last year’s winner
Tereza Reková’s documentary Good Will – Matěj triumphed in last year’s edition of the Prix Bohemia Radio festival. Also making the short-list was the first part of Brit Jensen and Magdalena Sodomková’s documentary series Yursa Swims for Her Life, which received the 2016 Journalism Prize. Author Magdalena Sodomková describes how that documentary came about.
The documentary Yursa Swims for Her Life was made as a coproduction of Czech Radio and the BBC. The story of an 18-year-old swimmer who escaped from Syria in 2015 received the Journalism Prize for 2016 for best audio visual report and also earned a nomination in the documentary category at the Prix Italia competition.
How did you come across Yusra Mardini’s story?
I met Yusra Mardini with photographer Lâm Duc Hiên in Serbia when she was just about to cross the Schengen border illegally with a group of 30 other refugees. We were looking for people who would take us with them (into the maize field) – and let us document them at a moment when the absolute majority of refugees did not want to be seen. That night Lâm Duc Hiên and I were arrested for alleged people smuggling.
What was the most intense moment during recording?
We learned after some time that Yusra Mardini had started swimming again in Berlin. When we came to visit her, Sven Spanekrebs, her trainer, was on the phone with somebody from the Olympic committee. In that moment we understood that it would be a very strong story that would resonate across borders. What’s more, we had a major head start on other media in that we had been following her when she wasn’t famous yet.
How did the cooperation with Czech Radio go?
I contacted Ondřej Suchan from Radiožurnál, who has an excellent journalistic instinct, and he put us in touch with the Danish radio documentary maker Brit Jensen. We started cooperating with a broad team. For me personally, as a print journalist, the cooperation was amazing – Brit Jensen and Lâm Duc Hiên are talented and highly regarded authors in their fields. Cooperation with composer Jan Trojan, who did our sound design, brought another dimension. Czech Radio provided us with facilities. The whole team deserve gratitude, in particular Dan Moravec, the Creative Hub, the data team and all the sound Engineers.
